Midwestern Graduate Liberal Studies Conference

The Graduate Liberal Studies programs of Indiana University invite you to participate in the sixth annual Midwestern Graduate Liberal Studies Conference.

The theme of this year’s conference is Fleeting Time, Enduring Issues. Our goal is to inspire thought and discussion about the contrast and tension between the rush of events and the scholarly need to be careful and patient. That care is partly a devotion to the deeper, lasting issues. We try as scholars to be responsible through our factual accuracy and considered judgment, but we are sometimes motivated by the heat of current events. Ultimately, we are often trying to capture and define fleeting events because of the enduring issues they seem to embody or express.

We seek papers and presentations on a wide range of topics. All presentations, though, should comment, at least in small part, on the issue of Fleeting Time, Enduring Issues. In other words, even in a paper that investigates a specific question, we would expect the presenter to (re)frame the presentation with some brief introductory or concluding reflections on how that topic might be considered in light of our conference theme of temporality.

The conference is designed to allow both formal and informal interactions among students and faculty from graduate liberal studies program in the Midwest. Conference schedule will include: SATURDAY, APRIL 9

10:00 – 10:30 – Registration (light breakfast provided)

10:30 – 12:00 – Student Presentation Sessions

12:00 – 1:00 – Lunch

1:00 – 2:00 – Keynote Speaker

2:15 – 3:45 – Student Presentation Sessions

3:45 – 4:00 – Closing Ceremony (light snacks)

Students from graduate liberal studies programs in the Midwest region are invited to present their work at the MGLSC. All types of work will be considered: empirical research, literature reviews, case studies, works of fiction, multimedia works, etc.

Submission Deadline: Friday, March 18, 2016

Please follow this link [http://gus.ius.edu/form-builder/forms/19] to submit a 250-word abstract. Midwestern Graduate Liberal Studies Conference Notification of abstract acceptance will be distributed via e-mail by March 25. If you have any problems submitting your abstract via the form please e-mail your abstract directly to Deborah Finkel (dfinkel@ius.edu)

Registration Deadline: April 1, 2016

All presenters and attendees (other MLS/MALS students and faculty) must register for the conference. Registration fee of $25 and registration information can be submitted at this link [to be added]. Please contact one of the members of the MGLSC organizing committee if you have any questions:

Welcome to Dense, Joyous, Modern

David Gitomer

I’m the director of DePaul University’s Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program and its sister program, Master of Arts/Master of Science of Interdisciplinary Studies Program. From our offices on Racine Avenue, near the western boundary of DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus, we see the rest of the city more easily than we see the rest of the campus. And our adult students are often more involved in their lives away from the university than they are in what gets called “campus life.” But we’re all thinking about graduate learning in an exhilarating interdisciplinary way. Check out our websites at IDS and MALS for official university program information. Stop by this blog often for reflections on what’s happening in the program, cool things that people should know about, or big questions that we’ve got to figure out.

I knew I would find the name of the blog in Whitman. Uncle Walt’s openness to all kinds of knowledge from all sorts of people everywhere in the globe, and his yearning and willingness to plunge into the heart of experience make him our hero. Illinois is of course the Prairie State.

Walt Whitman, “The Prairie States” from Leaves of Grass

A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,
Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,
With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,
By all the world contributed—freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s society,
The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations,
To justify the past.